Sam Halabi is a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Health. Lawrence O. Gostin is a distinguished professor at Georgetown University Law Center and directs the World Health Organization Center on National and Global Health Law.
President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the World Health Organization is a historic and ruinous event. The vision for WHO was born in San Francisco in1945, and the United States has always been its most influential member and largest funder.
This is also a critical act of self-sabotage because it undermines fundamental U.S. national interests.
Key to the security of any country is the scientific information needed to prepare for, prevent and respond to pandemics and other global threats. Simply stated, the WHO possesses an enormous amount of such data that the U.S. cannot replicate on its own.
And it matters a lot. The WHO’s Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System monitors influenza epidemiology (the currently circulating strain has caused 230,000 hospitalizations in the U.S.). It helps develop annual flu vaccines and will be essential for developing vaccines for pandemic influenza strains. The same is true for the WHO’s Global Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network. The WHO led the global coalition to eradicate smallpox and possesses the sole legal power to inspect the two known smallpox virus stocks, now held at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the Vector Institute in Koltsovo, Russia. The WHO holds vast information on manufacturing and logistics for researching poxviruses including mpox (once called monkeypox) worldwide.
The WHO is home to multilateral sharing of novel pathogens and genomic sequencing data that our pharmaceutical companies need to rapidly manufacture vaccines and therapies to combat novel outbreaks. Trump’s Operation Warp Speed could not have succeeded in creating innovative mRNA vaccines against the coronavirus in under a year without having access to the WHO’s samples of circulating pathogens. Many scientists believe we could launch other effective vaccines in a matter of months or less — but only if there is open scientific access and exchange. Without that access, U.S. pharmaceutical companies will be at a scientific and economic disadvantage and find it hard to innovate.
There are fair criticisms of the WHO. The agency has been slow and politically constrained in declaring and responding to health emergencies. Its budgeting and spending lack transparency and meaningful oversight. And it has too often deferred to governments that suppress or distort outbreak information — including yielding to China’s demands during the early weeks of the covid pandemic.
But there is simply no other organization through which governments, pharmaceutical companies and scientists around the world are willing to share their information, weaknesses and honest assessments.
In the recent America First Global Health Strategy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a transactional alternative to multilateral sharing of scientific data, suggesting that the U.S. could provide foreign aid in exchange for scientific information. That assumes the U.S. could ensure contracts with nearly every country in the world (before the U.S. withdrawal, the WHO’s 194 members included every U.N. member except tiny Liechtenstein), which of course it cannot. As of Jan. 14, the U.S. had signed only 15 bilateral health contracts, all with sub-Saharan African nations. America’s citizens, companies and institutions are now less safe as a result.
Preparing for and responding to public health threats relies on the widest range of societal actors pooling and distributing resources in a coherent way. During the covid emergency, the WHO organized large foundations, private companies and international organizations to accelerate the development and distribution of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines and to simultaneously strengthen health systems. Millions of lives were saved.
The WHO’s ability to facilitate and lead cooperative responses during emergencies has recently been enhanced through amendments to the International Health Regulations and the finalization of a new pandemic agreement. Ironically, the U.S. was a leading force behind both successful diplomatic negotiations.
A world that is united in detecting and responding to threats quickly, with better medicines and vaccines, supporting healthy, educated people is a world safer for all Americans. Every U.S. president since the WHO’s founding has understood that. Until now.
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